One of the most vexing problems I have encountered recently was when Live Writer was not able to open posts on DragonBlogger.com or even publish articles to the site. Any attempt to contact my WordPress blog would reveal a popup that complained about The server committed a protocol violation. Section=ResponseHeaderDetail=CR must be followed by LF.

This protocol violation was with Live Writer and this one WordPress blog, all my other blogs worked fine. I investigated like crazy and the problem only started happening when I switched DragonBlogger.com to using Incapsula. I even disabled WP Better Security to rule it out as a problem.

But, I found some solutions that applied to other .NET web applications that I was able to manually apply to Windows Live Writer and get it to work.

Steps to Fix Windows Live Writer Protocol Violation Problem

First make sure you closed Windows Live Writer, the program can’t be open.

Open your WindowsLiveWriter.exe.config (yeah it’s a .exe.config file) open it in a text editor.

Note:If you run into problems saving the file because of permissions, you will need to right click on the file, click properties and allow all users to read/write to the file, then modify the file and restore original permissions after you overwrite the file.

Start up Windows Live Writer, if it gives you problems double check the config file you may have broken the syntax or don’t have something copied correctly. If it starts properly then go ahead and connect to your blog and your problems should be resolved I know mine were.

Update: Okay I found out this fix does work for Writer 2012, I had to put the statement under the <configuration> tag instead of the <startup> tag however, so for Windows Live Writer 2012 you want it to look like this:

Update Dec 6th 2012

Note, if you put your blog behind the Incapsula web caching/proxy service it will block Live Writer without making this configuration change. I confirmed that using Incapsula is what caused Live Writer to stop working and making proper POST calls to the xmlrpc.php in WordPress. Adding the parameter remediates this problem.

Working in the IT Industry for over 13 years and specializing in web based technologies. Dragon Blogger has unique insights and opinions to how the internet and web technology works. An Avid movie fan, video game fan and fan of trying anything and everything new.

No, was Live Writer 2011, but I am going to install the new version and test with 2012 today.

http://113tidbits.com/ tony greene

So 2012 version connects to your site with no errors?

http://www.dragonblogger.com Justin Germino

Yes, when I upgraded to Live Writer 2012 it did not have this issue, Writer 2011 does. Odd I know, but hey at least I know this was the fix for Writer 2011.
Windows XP users cannot use Writer 2012 yet, I think it is only for Windows 7 and above.

http://www.dragonblogger.com Justin Germino

I got this working with Writer 2012, just had to put statement in a different section and it was required for me to get Live Writer to post to blog after putting blog behind Incapsula.

http://www.dragonblogger.com Justin Germino

I am going to update the article, I could not get this to work for Live Writer 2012, only for 2011. However, my Live Writer 2012 does not give me that error communicating with my blog only Live Writer 2011 did.